It is known in the art to incorporate light-absorptive dyes into photographic elements for anti-halation or light filtration purposes, and to either coat dye-containing media upon surfaces of photographic elements or incorporate them into a layer or layers thereof. It is desirable that such antihalation and filter dyes be sufficiently immobile or nondiffusing to prevent dye migration into adjacent photosensitive (e.g. silver halide) layers. Excessive dye migration can cause fogging and may reduce the sensitivity of certain photosensitive materials. It is also desirable that such dyes undergo substantially complete bleaching during normal development of fixing processes, leaving essentially no residual stain.
Very few dye materials known to the art combine these desirable features. Those dyes which are sufficiently hydrophilic to permit ready bleaching commonly exhibit a tendency to migrate into other layers of photographic elements. Dyes which are sufficiently immobile to prevent migration usually are not readily and completely bleached by common processing solutions. Furthermore, many of them do not have sufficiently narrow absorption spectra and high extinction coefficients in the desired regions of the spectrum.